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National Geographic weighs in with 17 kgs of astonishing photos

In collaboration with Taschen Books, the magazine marks 125 years with a massive three-volume set that just might break your coffee table.

Antarctica, 2012: Leaving a contrail of air bubbles in its wake, an emperor penguin rockets through the water, gaining the needed momentum to launch itself clear of a hole in the Ross Sea pack ice. The birds are famous for their spectacular leaps -- one thing that helps them elude leopard seals -- but only recently has it been discovered that the air bubbles act like a lubricant, cutting excess drag and improving speed. (Paul Nicklen / National Geographic)

Papua New Guinea, 2000: Even ghosts and other terrifying spirits deserve an occasional respite at the annual sing-sing, or tribal festival, near the village of Garong. These Asaro mud men daub themselves with river clay
and don ferocious masks in imitation of those ancestors who first assumed the spine-chilling
disguises in order to frighten off their enemies. (Jodi Cobb / National Geographic)

Australia, 1977: A 15-centimetre weedy sea dragon might appear formidable, at least to a tiny crustacean; but evolution
has played a trick upon him: The wily female of the species has deposited her 100-250 eggs
beneath his tail, then fled into the seaweed, leaving him not only to fertilize them but also to
spend the next three to fix weeks protecting the pink mass until the eggs hatch. (Paul A. Zahl / National Geographic)

Canada, 2011: Nestled deep in British Columbia's verdant rainforest, a "spirit bear" devours a salmon. Really a variety of a black bear -- a recessive gene is responsible for its white pelage -- the spirit bear, or Kermode, was revered by the province's once-numerous indigenous inhabitants. (Paul Nicklen / National Geographic)

Iraq, 1984: Baghdad's split-domed al-Shaheed Monument, or Martyr's Memorial, an eternal flame blazing at
its heart, ostensibly commemorates the Arab victory over the Persians at al-Qadisiyyah in A.D. 637. That was the battle Saddam Hussein invoked in 1980 before invading the modern Persia, Iran. (Steve McCurry / National Geographic)

Lebanon, 1957: A shepherd leading his charges down a busy Rue Georges Picot epitomizes the contrasts often encountered in mid-20th century Beirut: He wears Arab garb but also a Western-style jacket. Part Muslim and part Christian; part East and part West, Lebanon's capital was the "Paris of the Middle East," as famous for its glittering cafes as for its banks, bazaars, and trading houses. (Thomas J. Abercrombie / National Geographic)

Mexico, date uncertain: A strange sight to encounter in a Mexican dugout canoe: two captive jaguars sprawled out, greeting the photographer with a growl.
(Steve Winter / National Geographic)

New Mexico, 1939: While a confused motorist receives directions from a state trooper, a dog doesn't look like it plans on going anywhere.
(Luis Marden / National Geographic)

What do you do to mark your 125th birthday if you are ranked among the largest scientific and educational institutions in the world and just happen to have 11 million photographs — give or take — crammed in your archives?

The answer is fairly obvious. You publish a book. To be precise, you publish three books — and not the kind of books that bog the reader down with text.

You publish books packed with extraordinary photographs, page upon page of images that are by turns haunting, provocative, grandiose, nuanced, heroic, outlandish, gorgeous, troubling and ennobling, all reproduced in sumptuous colour or evocative black and white and printed in Italy on glossy, top-quality paper.

You call the three-volume project Around the World in 125 Years, set a print limit of 125,000 individually numbered copies, and slap a $500 U.S. sticker price on the result.

Et voilà.

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You would practically need a mid-sized elephant to transport the thing from one room to another — it weighs 17.7 kilograms — but this gargantuan, page-turning celebration of the photographer’s art is National Geographic magazine’s 125th birthday present to itself — and to the people willing to part with considerable cash in order to give the structural integrity of their coffee tables a rigorous test.

The huge and painstaking task of winnowing down an immense selection of photographs to a manageable number fell to three people: Reuel Golden, 51, an editor at art publisher Taschen Books, Taschen publisher Benedikt Taschen and designer Andy Disl.

“Just under” 1,000 photos made the cut, culled from the staggering number in the magazine’s archives.

“I can’t say I looked through all 11 million photos,” says Golden. “But I went through every single issue.”

Each of the three books has a geographical focus, with one volume devoted to the Americas (plus Antarctica), another to Europe and Africa, and the third to Asia and Oceania.

The images date back to the late 19th century, when the magazine was founded, but most come from a period some regard as “the golden age” of National Geographic magazine.

“We focused mainly on the 1920s to the ’60s,” says Golden. “The bulk of the material is from that period.”

Some of the images are most striking because of their historical value — for example, a fine sepia print of a paddle-wheel steamboat named the White Horse as it negotiates the Five Finger Rapids on the Yukon River around 1910. Others seize your attention because of their beauty and emotional power, qualities that seem perhaps especially prevalent in the work of National Geographic photographers as they explored Africa and the Middle East.

Golden says he and his collaborators on the project were surprised to find that the magazine was not always a model of evenhandedness in its presentation of our world. It definitely played favourites.

“I think what was clear to all of us is there were certain regions of the world that had a huge amount of appeal to National Geographic,” he says. The magazine’s preferred destinations included two European countries in particular: Switzerland and England. The Middle East also attracted a great deal of attention.

“The Middle East was a region that clearly, from the very early issues of the magazine, had some fascination, some mystery, for the National Geographic,” he says.

By contrast, certain countries or regions seemed underplayed. Golden mentions Brazil as one example and the former Soviet satellite states of Eastern Europe as another. Generally speaking, he says, the magazine seemed to favour rural scenes over cityscapes.

The magazine’s critics associate National Geographic with the stereotyping of non-Western cultures in ways that some might find patronizing.

Golden doesn’t speak directly to that issue, but he notes that the commemorative three-volume set mostly avoids certain kinds of images.

“In fact, there are not that many photos of topless indigenous women,” he says. “There are a few. One or two.”

In all, the project features the work of more than 260 photographers, the great majority of them male.

“It was a man’s world,” says Golden. “Even today, there are more men, but more and more women have been getting into the field.”

Photo-journalism is changing in other respects, and quickly.

During much of National Geographic’s existence, the only way to obtain images from some distant part of the world (distant, at least, from Washington, where the publication has its headquarters) was to send someone out into the field, armed with vast quantities of equipment.

Nowadays, anyone with a cell phone can snap a picture and transmit it instantly to almost any other part of the globe.

Golden, for one, believes these two spheres of photography can happily co-exist and even enrich one another.

“I don’t think the work of one means it’s the end for the other,” he says.

Sarah Leen, National Geographic’s director of photography, agrees.

“There are so many levels going on,” she says. “I look at all these things as tools to expand our story-telling.”

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